


Not the Darkness (The place rearranged remix)

by Estirose



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 04:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: In the end, Junpei uses himself to solve a mystery.





	Not the Darkness (The place rearranged remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morphogenesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Man of three fears: integrity, faith, and crocodile tears](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732420) by [morphogenesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/pseuds/morphogenesis). 

> I tried to do justice to the story I remixed from, as it is lovely.

It started with a dead man, middle-aged and unassuming to all. Junpei had known him, casually, a vague friendship that had never gone anywhere. Not enough to know why the man had been stabbed, left alone in a locked room. Not enough to know what might be going on in the man's life, if his widow was not as innocent as she seemed, if there had been someone or something else involved. He just didn't know enough, and it bothered him.

(Maybe in some other life, they had been good friends and there would have been no mystery. But Junpei was not that Junpei, and didn't have that insight.)

Figuring out how the death had happened was the easy part. Junpei had read enough mysteries - both good and terrible - to know what the solution was. A string, a knot easily untied, a smooth pull of said string and the door was locked behind the perpetrator. Voilà, the room was locked, the victim supposedly having stabbed himself twenty times. With his left hand, when he was right-handed, no less! 

His widow was different. She reminded him, obscurely, of Akane; he decided later that it was because she used the same hand cream as his wife, but he wouldn't rule out that she could be canny, hiding something behind her tears. Akane had played the innocent once when she'd been Zero; why shouldn't this woman be the same way? Akane had killed for him in at least one timeline, he was sure.

(This was not something he wanted to ask his other selves about. He was sure he didn't want to know what unethical things Akane was willing to do for him.)

It was why he hired an accountant to make sure there was nothing weird with the books, that there was no embezzlement. Just payments from an annuity and to a former partner, according to the accountant. Junpei knew the basics of finance, but he wouldn't know how to read financial records, much less see fraud. He knew there were sometimes multiple sets of books, the hidden true ones and the public but fake ones. He also knew there were ways to obscure purchases, file them under other things. He would never see something a specialist would, though. 

The accountant had to explain things slowly, three times, before the concepts stopped sounding like they came from Mars or something shitty like that. Payments that took away from the store's profit, payments that added to it. Junpei cursed himself for being so slow.

(Akane's teasing was at least understandable. Junpei shouldn't have to take a college course to understand the accountant's words, he thought.)

So back to research it was. Junpei was not dumb. He'd learned a lot from his friend Seven, and from his own time as a private detective. He knew more than Akane did about how certain things worked - he'd spent enough time around the criminal underworld to spot certain things, certain oddities that should not exist. Like, for example, dead partners. And widows that weren't all they seemed to be.

Junpei was more than familiar with people that weren't all they seemed to be. He'd gone through two Nonary Games with people who had hid parts of themselves. He'd gone through a game with a duplicitous CEO and pair of siblings, after all, and he'd even married Akane despite - or because of - everything.

(He was unfortunately aware of a timeline where Akane ruthlessly made him forget about her for decades until he would meet up with her again. He was glad that his timeline wasn't that one. He wasn't sure he could manage another few decades without seeing her again.)

There were ways to investigate that, but Junpei took a shortcut. There were many Junpeis with many lives, and one of them knew the widow well, knew her story well. Maybe too well; he had to wonder what that Junpei had been up to. He couldn't imagine ever settling down - or even sleeping with - anybody except Akane and maybe Carlos. But maybe circumstances were different for that Junpei, and perhaps he didn't want to know.

Using the information from those selves, he dug and he dug until he felt he had enough evidence. The man's widow tried to play it off with crying and hand cream, but he ruthlessly presented the evidence to her. She'd defrauded her last company, gotten fired, and tried to cover it up. Junpei was impressed with himself that he'd managed to retain something from the forensic accountant at least. And then he asked her what was going on.

(Akane would say that Junpei was impressive. Some of the time. He would protest that as she led him into bed.)

The wife was being blackmailed. She said it between sobs and sniffles, but the words came rushing out as if she'd meant to tell him all along. Her husband had wanted to stop it, but she had implored him not to. She'd choose him over her reputation any day. Her words reminded Junpei strongly of Akane, and maybe he understood why maybe one of his other selves had fallen for her. 

She told him of a friend who lived in a tiny fishing village, how he and her husband had planned to kill the blackmailer as a final way of saving her. It was then that she'd broken down completely, not being able to speak a coherent sentence for a few minutes.But she was able to resume eventually, tell him that the plan had backfired, the blackmailer one step ahead of her husband. Was the blackmailer left-handed, he'd asked her, and she nodded yes. Left-handed and continuing to blackmail her. She didn't know how she'd live, without her husband and with the blackmailer still alive. Junpei couldn't do much more for her, just accept some of her hand cream and wish her luck. He'd solved the case, but so what?

(In the end, Junpei was happy that he had Akane. She would not allow herself to be in that situation, nor would she ever allow him to be. In the end, as he curled next to her in bed, he knew that she had his back, and all was well.)

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration for the left-handed culprit came from an episode of Homicide Hunter.


End file.
